The full impact of the 2024 Oklahoma football season will not be known for several more weeks after the two national signing periods for the 2025 recruiting class and the opening of the transfer portal window along with any early NFL Draft declarations.
A big piece of uncertainty for next season has been clarified with the hiring of Washington State offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle to the same position at Oklahoma. This much-anticipated announcement came on Monday. In the meantime, this is a big week on the recruiting calendar with Early National Signing Day on Wednesday for recruits in the 2025 cycle.
Oklahoma is hopeful of signing most of the 19 players currently committed to its 2025 recruiting class, but there has been some recent fallout to the class, which at one time numbered 23. Over this past weekend, it was announced that four-star wide receiver prospect Marcus Harris had decommitted from his pledge to the Sooners, and it is rumored that fellow OU wide receiver commit Cortez Mills was expected to do so, as well, flipping to Nebraska.
If the news about Mills proves to be accurate, OU's 2025 class would be down to 18 commitments. And there are sources inside the Oklahoma program that believe it could be down one or two more by the time the early signing day class rankings come out later this week. That's what a bad football season can do to you.
Over a week's time in September, the Sooners lost a pair of defensive linemen who had earlier pledged to the Sooners' 2025 class: Floyd Bouchard out of Miami, Florida, and Ka'Mori Moore from the Kansas City area. Both were rated as three-star DL prospects. Two days before the Alabama game, and with the new offensive coordinator still unknown, four-star quarterback prospect Kevin Sperry, who attended the same high school in Denton, Texas, as Jackson Arnold, flipped his OU commitment to Florida State.
The hope is now that the offensive coordinator job has been filled it will help solidify the Sooners' 2025 class. There is still some uncertainty, however, about the status of Oklahoma's top-ranked 2025 recruit, five-star offensive line commit Michael Fasusi. Rated as the No. 3 offensive tackle in the 2025 class and the No. 17 player overall nationally, according to 247Sports, Fasusi committed to the Sooners on Aug. 21 following a fierce recruiting battle with Texas and Texas A&M.
Fasusi was originally scheduled to attend Oklahoma's game with Alabama, but changed those plans and instead announced that he would be visiting Texas the week of Nov. 18 and attending the Longhorns' final home game against Kentucky. He also paid a visit to Texas A&M and was in attendance on Saturday for the Aggies' rivalry game with Texas.
Fasusi has announced his firm commitment to OU several times via social media in recent weeks and he remains part of the Sooners' 2025 class. It's is uncertain whether he will send a signed Letter of Intent on Wednesday, but that does not necessarily mean he will not end up as an Oklahoma Sooner.
Venables was asked about recruits visiting other schools (in reference to Fasusi) during his weekly press conference ahead of the Alabama game.
"If you're visiting other schools, then to me, you're not committed," Venables said.
Venables' recruiting philosophy has always been if you commit to Oklahoma, you should be through visiting other schools. But he also knows how important Fasusi is to the future of the Oklahoma program, so he is not about to openly criticize the elite O-line prospect publicly.
The 6-foot-5, 295-pound O-lineman from Lewisville, Texas, is a critical piece to Oklahoma's future plans and a prospect the Sooners cannot afford to lose out on. He reportedly has a strong relationship with Sooner offensive line coach Bill Bedenbaugh and his family, which was a big reason he committed to OU.
There also are expected to be comings and goings from the OU roster when the transfer portal officially opens for business on Monday. The first of the Oklahoma dominoes fell over the weekend when sophomore wide receiver Jacquaize Pettaway announced he planned to enter the portal.
Pettaway, a member of the Sooners' 2023 recruiting class, played in 20 games for Oklahoma over two seasons but played only sparingly this season. He had a total of 16 catches for 157 yards and no touchdowns in his two seasons at OU.
Venables knows and fully expects there will be additional activity in the transfer portal, especially with the new NCAA rule that goes into effect after the 2024 season requiring college rosters to be reduced from 120 players to 105. In fact, the Sooners expect to pursue the transfer portal more aggressively this offseason and be much more selective in filling important roster needs for next season.
"We have signing day in a few days, and the transfer portal will open up," Venables said after the LSU game on Saturday. "There's gonna be some real change. Some of it is by design, some of it will be a surprise, and that's just the world we live in with open-ended free agency."
Over the next month and into the offseason, we're going to learn a lot more about how Oklahoma intends to go about fixing what went wrong for the Sooners in the 2024 season.